Part One: December 1991 to May 1992

Sitting by Paula's hospital bed in Madrid and waiting for any sign of improvement as her daughter lies in a coma caused by a rare blood disease, Allende begins to tell the story of her life with the purpose of offering her own past to her ill daughter. "Listen, Paula. I'm going to tell you a story, so that when you wake up you will not feel so lost."

Allende begins with her Chilean heritage and national history, her family tree, the controversial circumstances of her parents' marriage, and Allende's birth. Often switching between the vivid memories of the past and the silent waiting of the present by Paula's hospital bed, the narrator introduces a complex web of relatives that surrounded her during her childhood, after the scandalous divorce of her parents: her father abandoned the family after a political scandal at the...